As his consciousness probed forward and made contact with a point of light, Yu Ci felt as though he had entered a steeply descending passage, plunging wildly all the way down. Then his field of vision abruptly expanded, as though he were looking down from high above, gazing from several yards up in the air.
This should have been somewhere in the Graveyard of Grudges. The massive trees thick enough for an embrace were a highly typical marker of the environment. At the very center of his vision lay a cultivator, barely breathing. Yu Ci found it utterly baffling and was just about to take a closer look when the cultivator gave one last convulsion, lost the final spark of life, and died.
Everything before his eyes suddenly went dark.
When Yu Ci came back to himself, he was once again in the consciousness space of the metal moth. Of the dozen or so points of light, seven or eight had already gone out, including the one he had touched first.
"So that's how it is..." Thinking of something, Yu Ci did not waste any more time. He cast his consciousness into the point of light that appeared the most stable. The sensation of plummeting at terrifying speed returned, and he soon entered that strange bird's-eye perspective again.
This was still somewhere in the underground forest, but it was livelier than the previous place. At the center of his vision was another cultivator, likewise on the verge of death. Yet several companions stood nearby, frantically treating him. That was probably why he had barely managed to cling to life, giving Yu Ci time to observe. He wanted to see what connection the fragment had with the dying cultivator below.
Just as he was thinking this, a five-colored thread of light